Last month, I used AngelList data to analyze the technologies that startups use. After getting positive feedback on my analysis, I decided to dig into more AngelList data – this time looking at job postings.  There is a lot of job posting data available via API, and Joshua Slayton from AngelList was kind enough to send me some additional data that is not available via API.  

This series will consist of two separate blog posts:

Part 1: Basic stats about popular startup locations, job titles, vesting schedules, etc. [Full disclosure: this is the least interesting/actionable post in the series]

Part 2: Salary and equity benchmarks. By role, company size, etc.

Preliminaries

I took a snapshot of all jobs on AngelList on August 31st, 2014. There were 12610 jobs posted at the time.

Please note that this is an analysis of companies found on AngelList, which creates some expected biases. For example, the data will be biased toward earlier stage startups, and away from startups in non-English-speaking countries.

Job Locations

Top 20 cities

City             # of open jobs
San Francisco    2766
New York City    1676
Los Angeles       485
London            444
Boston            309
Palo Alto         300
Bangalore         263
Washington, DC    230
Toronto           226
Chicago           218
Mountain View     216
Seattle           201
Silicon Valley    186
New Delhi         185
Austin            161
Mumbai            153
Berlin            130
Vancouver         120
Santa Monica      117
Singapore         107

Next, I removed all cities that had 3 or fewer jobs (about 5% of all jobs) and categorized the remaining cities into geographic areas.

Jobs in each major geographic area

Geographic Area        # of open jobs
Silicon Valley         4130
US (minus SF, NY, LA)  2282
New York               1723
India                   839
Southern California     801
Continental Europe      649
Canada                  503
UK                      493
Asia                    238
Central/South America    91
Australia                78
Israel                   54
Russia                   46

Notable observations: SF, LA, and NYC make up almost 50% of all jobs on AngelList. Within Silicon Valley, 2/3 of all jobs are in SF and 1/3 are in Mountain View/Palo Alto/etc.

Openings per company

# of openings at startup	# of startups
1 opening	                3123
2 openings	                1238
3 openings	                 689
4 openings	                 349
5 openings	                 215
6 openings	                 115
7 openings	                  78
8 openings	                  47
9 openings	                  30
10 openings	                  26
11 openings	                  10
12 openings	                   5
13 openings	                   7
14 openings	                   3
15 openings	                   1
17 openings	                   3
19 openings	                   3
23 openings	                   1
25 openings	                   1

Notable observations: About 60% of openings are at companies that list <=3 jobs, 35% are at companies that list 4-10 jobs, and the last 5% are at a handful of companies that have 11 or more open positions.

Job Opening Types

Type        # of open jobs
Full-time   9740
Cofounder   1080
Internship   997
Contract     936

Equity Vesting

Most common vesting periods

Vesting period    # of open jobs
4 years           11096
3 years             526
0 years             355
2 years             269
5 years             182

Most common vesting cliffs

Vesting cliff    # of open jobs
1.0 years        11875
0.0 years          403
0.5 years          135

Notable observations: 4 year vesting with a 1 year cliff is by far the most common equity vesting set-up.

Job Functions

Role               # of open jobs
Developer          6486
Marketing          1795
Designer           1656
Sales              1601
Mobile Developer   1434
Operations          818
Product Manager     810
Hardware Engineer   288
Finance             227
Office Manager      157
Human Resources     143
Attorney             39

(The counts in the second column add up to a little more than 12610 because some jobs were tagged with multiple roles.)

In-demand Skills

Skills mentioned in at least 500 job openings:

Skill                   # of open jobs
Javascript              2372
Python                  1341
Ruby on Rails           1211
HTML                    1131
Sales and Marketing     1089
iOS Development         1069
jQuery                  1016
CSS                     1001
Java                     991
HTML5 & CSS3             952
Android                  852
User Experience Design   816
PHP                      777
Business Development     769
MySQL                    690
Node.js                  644
Social Media Marketing   604
MongoDB                  509
Amazon Web Services      503

Skills mentioned in 250-499 openings: Angular.JS, Objective C, Sales, UI/UX Design, HTML/CSS/PHP/MYSQL, Product Development, Ruby, Mobile Application Design, Mobile Development, User Interface Design, SQL, Backbone.js, Django, PostgreSQL, Linux, Git, APIs, Sales Strategy and Management, Product Marketing, Mobile, Data Analysis, RESTful Services, and Social Media.

Skills mentioned in 100-249 openings: Big Data, Graphic Design, Hadoop, Adobe Photoshop, Web Design, Web Development, Redis, C++, Mobile Application Development, Photoshop, Product Management, Machine Learning, Software Engineering, SEO/SEM, iOS, REST APIs, Customer Service, noSQL, Twitter Bootstrap, Front-End Development, C, Databases, SaaS, AngularJS, JSON, Business Operations, C#, Growth Hacking, Marketing, Scala, Analytics & Reporting, Adobe Illustrator, Online Marketing, AJAX, Communication Skills, Project Management, E-Commerce, Customer Relationship Management, Full-Stack Web Development, Web Analytics, Sales/Marketing and Strategic Partnerships, Coffeescript, Business Strategy, Account Management, Community Management, Content Marketing, Writing, Backend Development, Amazon EC2, Advertising, .NET, Visual Design, Agile Software Develoment, Software Development, Google Analytics, Adobe Creative Suite, Heroku, and Algorithms.